


Codename V.E.R.A.

by wittyshades



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-16 01:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11818077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wittyshades/pseuds/wittyshades
Summary: A few months after Winston calls Overwatch back to action, he gives Tracer leave to recruit someone who looks promising, a mechanic she knows back home in King’s Row. Taking the codename “Vera,” she joins up, albeit begrudgingly.Meanwhile, Talon's influence grows even as Overwatch tries to regain its footing. Talon's machinations threaten to provoke the worldwide civil unrest into another Omnic Crisis.Even cynical mechanics have to admit that something should be done about that.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> We all gotta start somewhere, right?

Lena was giddy. Overwatch was back in business! Sure, it'd only been back together for a few months now, but they were finally, finally regaining respect. With that in mind, Lena had asked Winston for recruitment leave.

Okay, well, she _did_ have plans to spend a few days back home with Emily. But she first zipped along King’s Row’s backstreets and down through the blasted-out gate to the old power station. She remembered blasting the door open with Dr. Zeigler, Engineer Torbjorn, and Lieutenant Wilhelm. She remembered dashing around, over, even through some of the Null Sector omnics. She remembered the carnage strewn about: twisted metal and sparking wire littered across the walkway.

* * *

_Cadet Oxton had knelt to pick up one of the OR-14 heads that had somehow survived the onslaught. As she turned it over in her hands, she felt Lieutenant Wilhelm’s heavy hand on her shoulder. “We have been discovered,” he muttered._

_They had. Curious denizens of the Kings Row Undercity--mostly omnics, but a few rare humans were allowed in their midst--began to show themselves, peeking out of previously-hidden doors and shutters. A woman, human, and scowling, was making her way to the unauthorized strike team. As she approached, the strike team could hear the sounds of metal hitting metal. Her legs and feet--from what they could see, anyway, the newcomer’s shorts came just above her knees--were all metal, perhaps scavenged from omnics? Her scowl showed teeth, a few of which were replaced with more metal, and her hair hung around her face to her shoulders in a bit of a dishevelled mess. Her clothes looked rough too: clearly the young woman had been defending herself._

_“The feds topside said you lot weren’t coming,” she said, tone accusatory through her scowl. “Said you had ‘other priorities,’ or something. It was hard to hear the news over the invasion.” She gestured expansively at the carnage around them. An omnic--one of the sensible ones, dull-silvery in color and human-shaped--picked their way over and around scrap to meet the stranger._

_“Volterra,” the omnic chided, voice feminine but synthetic. “We both know that Topside has its own agenda.”_

_“Indeed,” Reinhardt said. “We were told not to come here, by the Prime Minister’s orders.”_

_Volterra rolled her one right eye. Cadet Oxton noticed the left was covered by a plate and a green lens, some sort of technologic replacement for the biological eye. The skin around her eye held old, gnarled scars which twisted their way down her neck to her shoulders, at least. Running underneath the metal eyeplate and all down her face were cyan-colored implants. They were hard to miss against her dark skin._

_“Take a picture, girl, it’ll last longer,” Volterra said, pulling the OR-14 head out of Oxton’s loose grasp._

_“Volterra, they just saved us all,” the omnic scolded, placing her hand on Volterra’s forearm._

_“For now, anyway. Topside’ll investigate, and want to know what happened. Either we take the fall, or we blame it on a paramilitary institution which has plausible deniability. Mother, we’ve been had. Again. I’m sure someone heard the fighting progress down here.”_

_“That’s exactly why we gotta go,” Torbjorn griped, hammer clanging to dismantle his turret._

_Angela glided over to Tracer. “Oh, come now, child, you cannot expect reprisal from Overwatch,” Angela began, trying to smooth things over._

_Volterra shook her head, disgusted. “I can, and I do. Regardless of my expectations, you big damn heroes ought to get going before Topside really does come hunting for Null Sector.”_

_The omnic at Volterra’s side sighed. “As crass as that was, my daughter has a point. Forgive her mistrust, Overwatch. We truly do appreciate your intervention.”_

* * *

Since Overwatch’s dissolution, Tracer had had to find a new mechanic for her chronal accelerator. The best mechanics were omnics, and omnics survived below the roads of King’s Row. Through the gate where she had had her first mission, it was a few minutes away from her mechanic’s shop. The farther into the Undercity she went, though, the darker it became. It wasn’t that there were no lights in the omnic city hidden under King’s Row proper; it was that only about a third of the lights worked. Repairing the lights usually required brand-new materials from Topside. Expensive brand-new materials.

Tracer wove around a cluster of omnics surrounding a lamppost. One of them gave a half-hearted wave, and she returned it with twice the enthusiasm. The omnic’s processors hummed at a slightly higher pitch as he cheered up slightly. Overwatch Agent Tracer had that effect on the people in this part of the Undercity, near where Null Sector was defeated. Even Volterra, who usually had a low opinion of most Topsiders, had to admit that the Overwatch team’s intervention _may_ have been necessary to restore normalcy.

Volterra had actually grown less hostile (and only slightly less surly) through repeated exposure to Tracer. After being legally barred from visiting Winston, Tracer took her mechanical needs to the Undercity. Through trial and error, Volterra had managed to puzzle out the way the accelerator should be configured. Volterra’s shop bell, positively antiquated for the time, jingled merrily over the doorframe as Tracer hurried inside.

From the back room, a drone the size of a desk fan poked itself out to investigate.

“Who is it?” the mechanic called.

The drone beeped and floated over to Tracer. It gently bumped against her accelerator.

Tracer chuckled. “Apollo, it’s still not like you. It can’t be friends.”

The mechanic pushed past the curtain to her back room, mechanical green eye motionless but observant. “Tracer. I heard you’d left back to that job of yours,” she frowned.

“Yeah, ‘Terra, I did.”

Cheerful beeping sounded from the back room as a bastion unit, large for its make, stamped out, followed by another two floating drones.

Volterra glanced at the bastion unit. “Calm yourself, Bastard, it’s just Tracer.” Bastard chirruped a ‘hello,’ waving brightly. Tracer returned his wave, albeit nervously.

Volterra leaned on her counter, smearing streaks of grease further across her face and obscuring some of the glowing lines of her implants. “You’re lucky, had you come in much sooner, I would’ve still been elbow-deep in Bastard’s chassis and too busy to answer. Don’t tell me Overwatch forgot how to fix their own technology?” she mocked.

Tracer shook her head and gently pushed away the little drone that was still trying to hold a conversation with her chronal accelerator. “No, I have leave. W-- My boss wants me to look into recruiting new agents.”

Volterra raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you were trying to tap Bastard for that load of rubbish? We need him here. You know how bad Topside gets with us.”

Bastard churred darkly. The last time hooligans came from the surface, they ran away screaming from the angry bastion unit. It certainly helped that he looked a little bigger than most units and faint smears of purple Null Sector heraldry still graced a few parts of his chassis. Otherwise, his casing was intricately carved: the equivalent of omnic tattoos.

Tracer shook her head. “No, no. We actually, um, already found a bastion unit of our own. He’s, well, remarkably like your big guy here. I think his program corrupted and rewrote itself wrong, Torbjorn said…?” she offered.

Volterra grinned, her smile fierce. “Good. _Good._ The enforcer classes got shafted by the omniums, you know that? There was a command that set off a ‘kill-all-humans’ program embedded in the mental processes of all enforcer classes made shortly before and during the crisis. That code was hard to scrub out of the base code for everybody. But the fact that your bastion class managed to overwrite it himself means he was either very clever or very lucky. Perhaps both.” Her smile fell again. “But if you don’t want Bastard, then who do you intend to take with you? Am I supposed to give ‘em a tune up before they ship out?”

Tracer glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Volterra. “Actually, ‘Terra… We were thinking about you.”

Volterra arched her eyebrows. Her right eyebrow naturally went higher, the left’s journey somewhat stunted with its metallic eye below, but the surprise was clear. “Me. You’re out of your cir-- mind. I can’t leave. I have… I have the shop,” she finished, glancing over to one of her drones. “And these three. And Bastard. I have too much.”

Tracer frowned. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Bastard burst into a short flurry of beeps. Volterra scowled at him. “Bastard, no, shut up, that’s a reason to stay.”

Bastard beeped again, crossing his arms. Tracer didn’t need to understand binary to hear the ‘no.’

Volterra and Bastard held each other’s gaze for a moment, before she looked away. “Fine. I’ll…. Get a second opinion. And think about it. You in town a few days, Oxton?”

“Get me an answer before the week’s out. I’m gone Friday night.”

Volterra sighed. “Three days. Shouldn’t take me that long. I’ll be in touch, Oxton.”

Lena nodded and popped out of the shop. That went better than she expected, and worse than she’d hoped. She’d expected a flat ‘no’ from Volterra Abbot. It wasn’t the ‘yes’ she’d hoped for, but maybe ‘Terra would come around.

Lena could hope.

* * *

Volterra watched Oxton leave her shop. “Bastard, you’re lucky she doesn’t understand binary, or I’d junk you myself.”

Bastard gave a few unapologetic beeps with a shrug. Volterra rolled her one good eye. “I suppose I really should get some second and third opinions, shouldn’t I? Hell, Bastard.” She came around her shop counter, metal feet clanking against the hard shop floor. Her three drones zipped around to her. “Are you leaving too, or d’you intend to lock up? With how the family loves to talk, I’ll be gone the rest of the day.” Bastard stamped out of the shop with her. He waved jauntily with a whistle and set off down the street. Vera glared him down as she locked up the shop and followed him, her drones bobbing after her.


	2. Two

Volterra stared all around Gibraltar’s landing pad, Tracer beaming beside her. Volterra’s drones hovered close behind her, apprehensive and (in Spirit’s case) nervous. It was half-hidden in a natural cave on the east side of the Rock of Gibraltar, and the facility proper was bored further into the rock. The landing pad itself faced the Alboran Sea, and was fashioned in such a way as to be easily mistaken for a natural rocky outcrop.

“So maybe this ain’t as much bullshit as I thought,” she mumbled, taking a long moment to survey the hangar itself. She spotted a few of the new Overwatch agents milling about. There went an omnic, studded with green lights, crossing the tarmac with almost inhuman speed. She saw him duck into one of many buildings that burrowed into the rock wall. The ceiling of the cave had some lights embedded in it, which allowed for visibility in the back of the cave. Near the end of the cave, in front of the main structure, was a dead-to-rights cowboy, discussing something with a blonde woman in a white coat; a blonde who looked faintly familiar, but it was hard to place her. The main structure was identical to almost every other one in the cave, aside from its centralized location near the back. Volterra focused with her mechanical eye, enhancing her vision and studying the pair closely—maybe that doctor was the nosy medic on the Overwatch strike team? Volterra zoomed her vision back out and shifted her attention back to Tracer, who was waving her arms excitedly.

As it stood, Oxton was waving over another agent: a gorilla. In a lab coat. Volterra had seen a few characters walk in her shop some days (Lena having been one of them), but if these people were representative of Overwatch’s complete roster, then Terra was sure she had more interesting folks to meet.

The gorilla jogged over on all four limbs. “Ah, Lena,” he said, smiling. “I see your mission went well.” It was disconcerting, seeing an entire mouth of gorilla’s teeth bared in her direction. However, Volterra tried not to react. Tracer obviously knew the gorilla, so the fear she felt was unfounded. Besides, for all she knew, the gorilla could smell fear.

Tracer grinned back. “Of course, Winston. I told you I’m persuasive!”

One of the drones flitted up towards Winston and swerved around him to inspect him in his entirety.

Volterra frowned. “Sojourner, leave him alone.” She glanced at Tracer, hiding her giggle behind her hand. Sojourner swooped back around Winston to hover behind her creator again with her two fellows.

Winston regarded the three drones and their owner carefully. “You must be the mechanic I’ve heard about,” he began carefully, cocking his head to the side. His eyes watched her, cautious and curious in equal measure, as he adjusted his glasses to better look her over.

Volterra shrugged. “Possibly.” Her one eye glanced at Tracer, then back to one of the agents perched on a rocky outcrop near the ceiling: the greenlit omnic from before. He tossed a cheeky wave at her then turned his head to the doctor and the cowboy.

Tracer kept grinning. “No, definitely. She was the one I told you about, who patched up the accelerator while I was benched.”

Winston’s eyebrows arched. “Really now? Interesting. From what Tracer’s told me about you, Overwatch could definitely use your assistance.”

Volterra glanced back at the aircraft she had stepped out of. Home was very far away. This was clearly an entirely different world than the one she had grown up in. She wondered again what she was doing here… but she had promised people at home, her family, her neighbors, that she would do this. “...I can help,” she finally said. “How do we finalize this? Before I change my mind and hop back on that plane,” she sighed.

Winston turned and padded towards one of the side buildings with her in tow. “This way. I’ll need you to get a physical from our doctor, a demonstration of ability, and some preliminary information to register you in the system. Athena, inform Dr. Zeigler to prepare for a physical.”

“Yes Winston,” a disembodied voice answered from a communicator located on Winston.

“Our AI,” he explained.

“Of course,” Volterra mumbled. She glanced up, as if Athena was built into the ceiling, as if the ceiling would tell her more about anything going on in this place— But one of her drones dipped low and bumped into her hand with a quiet boop, asking to be pet. She glanced down to verify— yes, it was Spirit, more anxious than the others—and she rested her hand on the top of his chassis, stroking him with her thumb as they walked. She still had questions, but they could wait. She could explore the base freely later.

* * *

The physical with Zeigler was _an event_. Volterra, having lived in the Undercity since she could remember, did not know what to expect with a doctor’s visit. Officially-sanctioned maintenance for humans was hard to come by under King’s Row. This was compounded by the fact that the only interaction the two had had before was during the uprising.

Zeigler remembered, as did Volterra. Terra did her best not to scowl as she sat on the examination table and crossed her ankles. She almost wished for Apollo there to rudely investigate the various cabinets and jars, or Spirit’s quiet presence, or even Sojourner's almost overprotective curiosity. Tracer had wisely offered to watch them, though, to help keep them out of the doctor's hair. Lena’s many hours spent in the shop during chronal accelerator maintenance meant time spent with Volterra’s helpers as well. Besides, Tracer was fast enough to catch Apollo if she got into anything she really shouldn’t have

“So, what did happen to the Undercity after we left?” Angela asked, checking her patient over for visible injuries. The scars were old, very old. Time had already worked them over some, but it was obvious the original damage was too extensive to ever fully disappear.

“We salvaged what you left behind. When Topside came investigating, they said they knew it was your people. We said we hadn't seen you, we were all too busy hiding. True enough for most of us. ...We actually made out better for all the salvage we got.” She paused a moment. “Mother asked me to… deliver her thanks for all of… that,” she finished, almost pained in her admission. “Null Sector… could have done… worse, without intervention.”

Mercy smiled. “Of course. Did we see your mother that day? I did not see many humans in the Undercity…” From her countertop, Mercy picked up a long handle with a knob on the end. 

Volterra watched, uneasy. “Yes, you saw one of the women who raised me. The woman who asked me to be nice that day? That was her.” 

Mercy made a hum of acknowledgement and stepped closer, right in front of her patient. She clicked a button on the medical instrument and a tiny light shone out of the knobby end. She shone the light in Volterra’s eye. Volterra squeezed her natural eye shut and the green light dimmed in her mechanical one. She jerked her head away and hissed, “What the hell are you doing with that?”

Mercy withdrew a step, shutting off the light. “Examining your eyes, of course. Have you never been to a doctor?” she asked with genuine curiosity

Hunching over, Volterra sighed and rubbed her eye. “No, I haven’t. Not a ‘proper’ doctor, at any rate.” 

Mercy frowned and hovered her hand over one of her metal knees. “But these prosthetics...?”

The leg crossed over its mate. Its owner scowled and crossed her arms as well. “I said ‘proper doctor,’ as in one with a pretty little Topside office. Some people in the Undercity have worked with medical professionals before; they picked up enough. Cobalt had done a fair few operations working with some surgeon topside, an’ he still works with ‘em.”

Mercy held her displeased expression. “Alright then. This light will let me see inside your eye through your pupil. It won’t take long, and I need to make sure your eye is still working properly.”

Scowling, Volterra crossed her arms and kept her eye squeezed shut. “I can see you just fine. I don’t need you to tell me that my eye works.”

“Perhaps, but I can see things that might become a problem if left unchecked. It won’t take but thirty seconds,” Angela pressed.

Terra turned her head back to face forward and relaxed her eye. “Fine. Make it quick,” she griped and opened her eye.

“Thank you.” Mercy made the eye examination as quick as she could. “It does not look like there are any problems,” she reported, turning to write down her findings on an empty medical chart.

“Like I said,” Volterra huffed, rolling her eye. “It’s fine. What else do you need to see?”

Angela attached a cone to the end of her device and walked to the side of her patient. “I'll look in your ears now, again to check for underlying abnormalities.”

This time, Volterra let her examine without argument. First, Mercy checked the right ear.

“I can already tell you that my left ear probably has some synthetic elements. I'm not sure what exactly had to be done, but when I was found, the damage was heavy,” Volterra offered, albeit still miffed. “I know there's a fair bit of nerve damage, but that's all been patched with circuits and wires.”

The doctor walked around to examine the left ear, on the side with the mechanical eye. With her medical looking device, she peered into Volterra’s ear. “Intense scarring, yes. Almost like this ear was grafted on? How long ago was this damage?”

Terra shrugged, somewhat self-conscious. “Since I can remember, I suppose, I dunno.”

“And a surgeon did none of this? Considering a lack of formal training, you are remarkably well put-together,” Angela mused, pulling away to scribble more notes onto her charts. Then she turned back to her patient. “Place your finger on your nose.”

She frowned, but did as she was told.

“Good. Look at this finger,” Angela said, watching her closely. She held up one finger and moved her hand to her left. Volterra’s eye followed. The finger swapped over to the right side, and so did Voterra’s focus. Angela moved her finger in several directions, testing her patient’s eyesight and focus. “...Excellent. Does anything hurt?”

Volterra shook her head.

Angela nodded and picked up something that looked like thin hydraulic tubes joined by a metal disc at the end. The separate ends of the tubes went into her ears and she held the disc in her hand. “This stethoscope is for listening to your internal organs. It may be cold,” she warned, pressing it against Volterra's chest.

Even through a shirt, the disc _was_ cold, and Volterra had to bite back a sneer. Instead, she clenched her jaw at the sudden spike of coolness. 

Angela took half a minute, perhaps, pressing the disc against her, then placed it somewhere else on her patient’s chest. She moved it another time or two, taking a moment to let the disc stay in place, then she asked her patient to take deep breaths. Bemused, Volterra did so. Angela took off the stethoscope and placed it next to the medical chart and recorded whatever Volterra’s innards had told her.

“One last thing, Volterra, I need a blood sample. This is decidedly the worst part for everyone,” she said, trying to soothe Terra while she could.

This time, Terra really did sneer. “Do what you gotta,” she muttered, glad that her drones were not present; none of them would have stood for Angela's syringe piercing their human’s arm, no matter how well-intentioned. She watched Angela tie a strip of rubber around her arm and wipe off a small area with an alcohol pad. Then Angela picked up the syringe.

“I need you to relax,” Angela murmured, the needle hovering just above her arm, ready to pierce skin.

Volterra forced her fist to unclench and stared straight ahead to let Angela take the blood she needed. Cobalt had never done this. He had been custom-built for the medical field, and had various sensors and scanners built into him. He had never had cause to draw blood, or do anything this invasive just to gauge her health.

The needle stung, no more so than the many times she'd pinched her skin between metallic joints in the shop, aside from the fact that the pain went on far longer than was usually allowed. She, like every other creature that felt pain, would remove the source of the pain in any other case. The feeling of blood flowing out a single point, orderly and neat, was a completely new sensation, however. Now she understood why Topsiders complained about extensive doctors’ visits.

The doctor gently removed the needle and smoothed a plaster over the entry point. “There we go. You’re finished here, Volterra.”

“Brilliant,” she said through gritted teeth, hopping to her feet and making a hasty retreat.

* * *

The ‘demonstration of ability’ went somewhat better. Winston walked her to the entrance of the training room. “The practice drones aren’t designed to kill, but they can still pack a decent punch,” he cautioned as Volterra walked inside, followed by her ever-present trio of robots.

The training room was the largest single room in Gibraltar, by all dimensions. To the left of the entrance was a flight of stairs, which led to the catwalks that went across the room, and even helped support small rooms of its own. The bottom floor held its own hidey-holes, and various other pieces of cover. Walls portioned off bits of the room to provide additional protection from attack—and to obscure the battlefield.

Winston’s voice sounded over an intercom, echoing around the ceiling. “There are five drones scattered around the area, with orders to search and subdue. Show me that you can hold your own, Volterra.” The intercom cut out with a loud click.

She said nothing; there was no point to it. Nothing to do now but prove her worth

Volterra waited by the door for a moment. She unholstered her pistol, a homemade machine of her own design. It was a dark grey and blocky with a trigger guard that extended down to protect the hand as well. It connected with the handle at their bases and was made of the sturdiest metal she could find. She flipped up a latch on the side of the gun, unlocking a panel and allowing it to swing down so she could double-check her ammo. Only half a block of scrap left, but it would do. She closed the panel back and pushed the clasp flush with the side of the gun and crept up the stairs, her drones silent shadows behind her.

One enemy robot, easily three times the size of her own, hovered along the catwalk crossing to the other side of the room. Its optical sensor was facing away, scanning carefully for its intended target. Its guns, on its sides like arms, were trained ahead, ready for battle.

She took aim at the machine’s boxy head and fired off a few slivers of superheated metal, shaved from the scrap-block in the gun. Her drones joined in with their own hail of tiny laser blasts. The enemy robot dropped to the ground, clattering loudly as it lost power. One down.

* * *

Winston’s lab wasn’t far from the practice range. The lab itself was large and littered with incomplete projects, diagrams, and news clippings. In one corner, huddled in a neat pile, was armor which would only fit a gorilla. Sojourner immediately hovered over, curious about its form and function. Carefully, extending one of the spindly attachments usually used to help her master, Sojourner prodded at the empty metal.

Volterra hissed, “Sojourner, get back here. Leave it alone!”

From a tire swing near the top level sat Winston himself, without his lab coat. He chuckled and swung himself over to the top level. “It’s alright,” he called down. “I highly doubt that armor can get wrecked by just one drone.” He motioned for her to join him.

Heedless, Volterra went over to Sojourner and picked her up anyway. She held Sojourner’s oblong body with both arms, the better to keep her from escaping. “You’d be surprised,” the mechanic answered, climbing up the stairs. “They can be destructive little shits.” Apollo beeped indignantly, following her up. Spirit gave his best equivalent of a sigh as he floated after her. He knew _exactly_ what his master meant.

Winston stopped in front of his computer. With a few taps of his keyboard, he brought up the slightly-grainy footage of the test in the training room. “That was a fine job you did in there. Look here, you had the last training drone distracted by all of yours and you incapacitated it by flicking the power switch. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that,” he said, zooming in on the action. Indeed, there went Sojourner, Spirit, and Apollo, weaving in and around each other in front of the enemy robot and Terra dove for the power switch she’d discovered under that model’s arm.

The woman herself said nothing to that. “I can probably fix the other four. Maybe three, I’m not sure how bad the third one had it in the fall.” The third enemy had been dispatched by a quick hand-to-hand struggle that ended when it fell off the upper level catwalks.

Winston shot back a sideways look. “That’s not my immediate concern. What is my current concern is making sure you are aware that I am rather impressed— and that we could definitely use your abilities here in Overwatch.”

Spirit hovered close to the monitor and tittered nervously, zipping back behind his person.

Volterra raised her good eyebrow and focused her attention on Winston. “Fair point. This is illegal, isn’t it?”

Winston sighed. “Yes, the PETRAS Act did make official Overwatch activity unlawful. But this is—”

She nodded. “—bigger than that. Yeah. I just needed to hear it from your mouth. We both know we’re not supposed to be here, and I don’t want you to gold-plate it. Or anything. I can’t be prepared for what’s happening if you give me the gold-plated version. So,” she sighed, “I assume you need answers for your files.”

Winston turned and tapped on his keyboard. “Obviously, I'll need your name. Your full name,” he amended, glancing back at her.

She stepped up to the computer's keyboard. Bemused, Winston stepped aside. 

Winston looked it over. “That's… an unusual name. You know, the first letters—”

“Are an acronym, yes. They planned that. Omnics like wordplay. Most of ‘em like that sort of thing. Like rebuilding old words to suit their purposes.”

He hummed. “I suppose so. 'HAL-Fred Glitchbot’ comes to mind.” Winston pointed to the next line of information. “Your contact information, when on leave, or in cases of recall. I—”

“Pardon the intrusion, Winston, but Agent Reinhardt is logging in the main entrance. I assume you will want to greet him,” Athena interjected.

“Thank you, Athena,” Winston answered. He gave Volterra a worried look. “Can you manage the information on your own? Athena will be here if you have questions…”

She waved him off. “I can read, thanks. You don’t have to hold my hand.”

Winston nodded and took his leave at a somewhat hurried pace in order to catch Reinhardt near the entrance. Volterra turned back to the information. She looked over her name again, mouthing the acronym Winston had pointed out, seeing how it felt in her mouth.

It would do.

Volterra Eulalia Rhondatta Abbot filled out Winston’s forms and saw herself out of his lab. As Overwatch agent Vera, she was certain there was something to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll dig into the plot better in the next bit. ~~GOTTA SET UP THAT WORLBUILDING THO—~~


End file.
